The Catholic Mission in Low Earth Orbit

There was a mistiness in the man’s eyes as he affixed his gaze upon the wooden idol of Christ suspended above the altar. In the past few months, Father Rodriguez had become familiar with this look. On a day-to day-basis, few inhabited his pews, but whenever there was a visitor, they did not come lightly. It did not surprise the Bishop, given the geographic nature of his churchgoers’ profession, to see the immense anguish and anxiety they brought to this place of worship. Still, he could not help but look upon the dark expressions of the men and women who entered his mission and wonder if the species was making a mistake. He looked upon them and thought he might go down in history as an accessory of the settlement of the final frontier, a historical movement not currently classified as criminal, but surely would be in due time by the next generation of historians

“Bless you, Father,” The man said, turning to Father Rodriguez, tears rolling down his drawn, visor-sealed face.”Bless you for operating a mission out here. Without your services, I don’t know how I might live. Lost as they are, how can the faithless travel through space with such ease and expedience, Father?”

“They aren’t lost,” Father Rodriguez said. “They are simply navigating by a different star.”

“Bless you, Father. Again I say, bless you.”

“Bless you, and remember it is God’s will for the meek to inherit the earth. The earth, but also everything beyond.”

“Bless you, bless you.”

Father Rodriguez walked with his parishioner, whose mandated time for worship was over and now had to return to his ship. Only, that wasn’t right. There can be no parishes in outer space, just as there can be no parishes in the ocean, no lines on a nuncio’s map stretching up and down the Atlantic or the Pacific. On dry land, important men can draw all the borders they want, but nobody can make a meaningful demarcation here, in the dark and infinite starry soup beyond the clouds. This is not because of some unique and inherent sanctity found in space, politicians and merchants seldom care about such heady and nebulous concepts as sanctity. No, only by virtue to its very nature shall space forever remain unmarked. Not by the President of the United States of America, not by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, not even by the Supreme Pontiff of the Vatican in Rome.

The man’s ship was in a large room adjacent to the chapel, a room NASA and Italian Space Agency called the “port”. He climbed inside, revved up the engine, and waved goodbye to Father Rodriguez as the ceiling above them opened up. The Bishop waved back and watched in amazement as the ship began to levitate off the ground, then shot upwards and out of the port all at once. In the eight or so weeks he’s taken up his role at this mission, he had seen that same sight a few dozen times before, but is it not the nature of any horribly out of touch, middle-aged person to be left in stunned silence at the sight of enormously advanced technology operating miracles right before them? Father Rodriguez considered cell phones to be the height of technology when he was a child. He and his family, living for twenty-three years in their small, drafty, and miserable little home just outside of La Paz, could have never even imagined this particular science-fictional, Star Warsian reality would develop so rapidly. Maybe in a few centuries, but certainly not in the same historical epoch as the invention of the iPad or the Nintendo Wii. Both were fine products for their time, sure, but nobody in their right minds would have thought that within but a few decades of their creation, the harbingers of a new Scientific Revolution would begin to appear.

As the man’s ship became just another tiny white dot in the spotted black firmament before disappearing entirely from sight, Father Rodriguez left the port, walked down the chapel’s aisle, and came to his bedroom. There was a small cot, a dresser, a giant fridge full of food next to all the appliances needed to cook them. Father Rodriguez took a seat at the foot of his cot, grabbing the transmitter from the nearby dresser, waiting.

He looked out the window. Gliding past his mission was another ship, much bigger than the one that just left the port. Father Rodriguez (having taken off his helmet several minutes prior, when the port’s ceiling closed) adjusted his glasses and saw a familiar orange emblem, the logo of the Amazon-SpaceX Corporation, and sighed. He, of course, knew about the now legendary merger and knew they were already shipping steel beams and seed potatoes to New Los Angeles and New Guangzhou. But one of the chief pleasures of growing old and silver is that, not only do good things tend to slip the mind but bad things too. He had forgotten about that particular capitalist landmark achievement, and he wished for it to stay that way, but alas. Upon consideration, though, he supposed he was being too unrealistic. Capitalism is, if nothing else, exceptionally good at reminding everyone of its achievements. Could he truly expect to escape the long shadow of American consumerism? How might anyone escape the country that has mastered the art of flashing the same three images over and over again on incessantly squawking screens?

Father Rodriguez usually found that making generalizations about such vast and nebulous institutions like economic theories and nation-states to be tremendously unhelpful. To declare that Christianity is merely good or merely bad is a pointless exercise. Certainly, the death of Christ has resulted in some of the greatest atrocities known to mankind. There is evidence of that across history, from the throat of the medieval Levantine baker being slit open by the dagger of a French squire to the bastardization of the messages expressed in apostolic epistles and New Testament parables by such profoundly evil and idiotic individuals as Hitler, Mussolini, and all those who excitedly turn the pages of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. All of this happened, yes, but still, it was a Christian charitable organization based in Costa Rica that helped to lift his family out from poverty. It was a Christian church in Montevideo that gave him and a hundred other destitute people shelter, food, comfort, and a reason to believe life had meaning and that hope was an acceptable response to conscious existence. It was a delegation of Chrisitan priests that he joined on a whim that flew out to Liberia, not to convert and plunder like last time, but to deliver crates and pencils and crayons and notebooks to the Monrovian schoolchildren and to deliver CPAP machines to understaffed hospitals. No sane individual could ever believe or argue that those Uruguayan friars had an overarching moral code or set of principles that was in any way similar to that of the Parisian crusader or the Brandenburger ultranationalist. It was for that reason that Father Rodriguez never much liked to discuss the “nature” of institutions that are larger than a few hundred people, for very little of what any such organization really represents or stands for can ever be meaningfully captured in but a handful of sentences, bold or witty as those sentences might be.

All that said, Father Rodriguez had a hard time believing the United States to be anything but the manifestation of much of the corrupted and rotten facets of contemporary existence. It would be bad enough if their only crime was their propagation and expansion of that most unholy and tragic of marriages, that between capitalism and religion, a union birthed not in the minds of American industrialists and politicians but was certainly made massively successful and popular by them. Though, Father Rodriguez had to admit his perception of the “country upon the hill” was a bit biased, just a tad skewed by personal experience. He truly had a hard time believing any good could come from the dark and bloodied splotch on the map that spawned Henry Kissinger. When Mr. Kissinger sat at his desk and signed those papers, did he consider that Argentine unionists like the Bishop’s father had families, had a wife and four toddlers living homeless near the Bolivian border? Father Rodriguez had a hard time believing he did. He imagined that all the important men who ran the day-to-day governing of that depraved country could uncage a starved condor in the middle of a field of newborn golden retrievers and watch the carnage with an unaffected, perhaps even joyful look upon their faces, so long as they were each promised five dollars beforehand for completing the task.

“Ground control to Father Rodriguez. Come in Father Rodriguez.”

This sudden calling of his name gave Father Rodriguez, thoroughly lost in thought while composing yet another diatribe against American capitalism in his head, a bit of a fright. He fumbled around with the transmitter before finding the one that kind young woman at the NASA offices told him to press when receiving an incoming call.

“This is Father Rodriguez.”

“A reporter from NPR named Isaac Johnson says you’re supposed to give him an interview. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Mr. Johnson is standing by. Want me to connect you to him right now?”

“Yes.”

“Alright. Talk to you later, Father Rodriguez.”

“Yes. Thank you, Mr. Bryan.”

Father Rodriguez tapped his feet to some imagined melody while waiting. It always took a while to connect him with whoever wanted to talk to him, and whenever he was giving some kind of interview or talking to someone important, the wait always made him nervous. That was true this time, though two months prior, he had to wait an agonizingly long time to talk to the Pope, who wished to personally congratulate him on being the first to expand the Catholic enterprise beyond Earth. The nervousness he felt waiting on a call from an NPR reporter seemed absolutely trivial in comparison.

“Hello?” A voice came from the other side of the transmitter.

“Hello.”

“Is this Father Rodriguez?”

“This is he.”

“Ah, good. I assume the guys at NASA explained the situation?”

“Yes.”

“Well, even so, I should formally introduce myself. I’m Isaac Johnson. I work for National Public Radio. We’re doing this interview for our segment, All Things Considered.”

“I am Ezequiel Rodriguez. It is nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

“English is not my first language. I apologize in advance.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be fine. Just tell me when you’re ready and we’ll get started.”

“I am ready whenever you are.”

“OK then.”

There was a slight rustling sound on the other side of the transmitter. Then his voice returned.

“Alright.” Mr. Johnson said. “I’m here with Father Ezequiel Rodriguez, once an earthly bishop and now the first Catholic priest in outer space. How are you, Father Rodriguez?”

“I am fine.”

“Father, there has been plenty of talk among leaders of all faiths, be them Catholic like yourself or Protestant or Muslim or Buddhist, about the role religion will come to play in this new age of more widely accessible means of space travel. And, of course, this comes at a time when many are echoing those famous words Musk gave at the first launch, about how the age of commercially viable space flight will ‘destroy religion’, as he put it. Speaking as someone who has spent over half a year in space yourself, what is your take on this?”

“I speak with the utmost politeness when I say Mr. Musk is entirely wrong in holding that belief. I know I come at this with a rather biased point of view, but not only do I think Christianity and all religions will survive this new era, I think they will take on new and greater importance in the lives of all, faithful and faithless alike. As we expand out into the galaxy and the universe, we will find many things, dark and distorted things beyond what we could ever imagine. As we encounter these things, I believe more and more will seek comfort and reconciliation with whatever divine entity or entities they believe in.”

“But those like Mr. Musk and his supporters would say the exact opposite will occur. Mankind will soon leave the solar system, leave the galaxy even, and find, like you say, ‘things beyond what we could ever imagine’. As we, for example, encounter new planets and interact and intermingle with all manner of extraterrestrials and new forms of life, each with their own cultures and faith systems and beliefs, the idea that we humans exclusively know and have access to the one true God or gods who created the entire universe will eventually seem ludicrous. When we discover a new star system with tens of billions of trillions of people inhabiting its many planets, how can we ever again that believe our native gods are real? How can this notion that mankind has a monopoly on God survive as researchers say we will meet some sort of alien race in just a few short decades?”

“There is some logic in that line of reasoning, I cannot deny that. But still, I cannot imagine a future in which at least a few members of the human species still cling to Christ, to Muhammad, to the Buddha. After many years of service, I can say that the chief business of all religions is the providing of hope to those who lack it. How every religious person finds hope is different. Christians like myself find it in the pages of the Bible, those of the Jewish faith in the Talmud, Muslims in the Qur’an, and et cetera. Yet still, we all, Christian or Jewish or Muslim, are engaging in the same activity, are we not? We are all searching for meaning, all searching for some overarching reason for our existence. In other words, we are all searching for hope, some reason to believe, however unlikely, that we are not insignificant, that we are not tiny, that we are not powerless after all. 

It matters not, therefore, what is thrown at the devoutly religious person. When the Sun swallows our home planet, when its flames devour all our basilicas and mosques and synagogues and temples, we will continue to believe. When we discover a quintillion more inhabited planets, we will continue to believe. When we discover some terrifying creature crawling out of a black hole, so horrible we do not even have the words to describe it and, therefore, can not even conceive of how horrifying it might look until we encounter it, we will continue to believe. We will continue to believe because religion is nothing if not the urge to believe, in spite of everything, that there is hope and there is a purpose. A lot might be said if, in a thousand years, the Christian population of this universe is reduced to but a dozen cold and starved believers huddled around a small, crumbling cross, but no one could ever say those dozen wholeheartedly believed, however foolishly, that there was some point to the human endeavor, some point to their own, individual lives, and the individual lives of all those who came before.”